Comeaux v. Henderson
| Decision Date | 05 July 1972 |
| Docket Number | No. 71-3505.,71-3505. |
| Citation | 462 F.2d 1345 |
| Parties | Claude COMEAUX, Petitioner-Appellant, v. C. Murray HENDERSON, Warden, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Richard M. Olsen, New Orleans, La. (court appointed), for petitioner-appellant.
Claude Comeaux, pro se.
Stacy Moak, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baton Rouge, La., James N. Stansbury, Lafayette, La., for respondent-appellee.
Before JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge, and GODBOLD and SIMPSON, Circuit Judges.
Claude Comeaux was convicted of aggravated burglary in a Louisiana court and sentenced to imprisonment for thirty years. On direct appeal he contended that a piece of cloth and a pair of pinking shears, introduced at trial for the purpose of connecting him with the burglary, had been illegally seized during a search of his home in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Louisiana Supreme Court, two Justices dissenting, affirmed the conviction. State v. Comeaux, 1968, 252 La. 481, 211 So.2d 620.
Comeaux then sought Federal habeas corpus relief, again challenging the validity of the search. The District Court dismissed the petition without an evidentiary hearing, concluding that under the standards prescribed by 28 U.S.C.A. § 2254(d) and Townsend v. Sain, 1963, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 the State court proceedings conclusively established that the petitioner was not entitled to relief.
We vacate and remand for further development of the facts. On the authority of James v. Louisiana, 1965, 382 U.S. 36, 86 S.Ct. 151, 15 L.Ed.2d 30 the Louisiana Supreme Court explicitly rejected the State's theory that the search was incident to the defendant's arrest, while the facts delineated in Justice Barham's dissenting opinion strongly suggest that the search warrant was invalid, 211 So.2d at 625. The only remaining justification is the purported consent to the search given by Comeaux's wife, allegedly obtained after she was arrested and confined in the parish jail with her husband and after she was shown a warrant upon which the State has consistently declined to rely in attempting to establish the search's legality. Bumper v. North Carolina, 1968, 391 U. S. 543, 550, 88 S.Ct. 1788,...
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U.S. v. Leary
...221, 226, 2 L.Ed.2d 199 (1957)).9 The Court's language in Bumper has not been applied literally in all cases. See Comeaux v. Henderson, 462 F.2d 1345, 1346 (5th Cir.1972) ("not every consent to a search is automatically vitiated simply because a tainted warrant is immediately or remotely in......
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People v. Walters
...While it is true that not every consent to search is automatically vitiated when a tainted warrant is involved (see Comeaux v. Henderson (5th Cir.1972), 462 F.2d 1345, 1346), a consent is deemed invalid if the consent itself is the fruit of the illegal search warrant. (United States v. Stin......
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United States v. Stine
...search. See e. g., United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411, 425, 96 S.Ct. 820, 46 L.Ed.2d 598 (Powell, J., concurring); Comeaux v. Henderson, 462 F.2d 1345 (5th Cir. 1972). The search in this case was voluntary in the sense that it was neither coerced nor fraudulently induced by the Governmen......
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